Impressive, yes?

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that 3829 had the Sicks a few weeks ago. Like, major Sicks. Mine took the form of a grody case of conjunctivitis (not Pink Eye, but something for which I had to use antibiotic drops), and a REALLY bad cough. I'm talking, the kind of cough where it's embarrassing to even think of going out in public in case you have a fit; the kind that jolts you awake in the middle of the night and forces you to sleep in an upstairs bedroom so that your husband isn't kept awake; the kind where you cough so hard you gag and burst some blood vessels in your eyeball.

Oh, I'm sorry; am I grossing you out?

Anyway, not to get all geriatric on you, but I had this cough for almost 2 weeks. Then, last weekend, it just went away. No note or anything. So the cough was gone, but then I got this bad pain in my right side. I thought maybe I had pulled a muscle doing yard work (yes, my upper body is that out of shape), so I took some ibuprofen and tried not to think about it. But the pain persisted and, ever the Googler, I looked it up. Of course my search pulled up all these horrible ailments, but they all said to "see your doctor."

I managed to tough it out until yesterday, when I took advantage of the fact that I had a spouse/babysitter at home and, therefore, wouldn't have to drag my son to the after-hours clinic and field a thousand questions on a thousand topics about the other "sick" people (trust me on this).

Sidenote: I'm super-proud of the fact that I was the first person to fill out the insurance forms, beating out the mother of this kid on crutches with a foot the size of my 16-pound dog, and a guy with a bloody patch over his ear. Promptness has always been my "thing."

Anyway, the doctor orders some X-rays to rule out a collapsed lung (or some other term that I completely glazed over from fear), and....

...I have a cracked rib. From coughing. I have THAT great of a set of lungs. Six to eight weeks before it heals itself. Anyhow, it was slightly embarrassing to tell Mark, but then this morning he carried the laundry basket to the washer for me and hauled the garbage cans out to the curb tonight, so I might just milk it. Six to eight weeks should get me out of a lot of lawn-mowing and bringing the groceries in.